Warning: You May Want To Grab An Air Sickness Bag. I’m in One of “Those” Moods…

A couple of tight deadlines and the need to both work and save what little free time exists for a conversation with a coach necessitates a lazy news-gathering day for me. Check out Brian Mull’s entry for some UNCW workout news. There is also a link to a story he wrote for the Wilmington fishwrap, but use his link at his blog. He did the work, he gets the credit.

***

However I will use this opportunity to wax poetic for a moment, because this is the time of year for poetry waxing if you love college basketball. I caught up with a good friend of mine yesterday who is also a warped college hoops junkie fan of college basketball.

We were talking about the summer being, in his words, a reverse bell curve of interest. College basketball is so front and center from October through March (and now early April…someone please tell the NCAA to cease talking to David Stern) that after your own personal downtime (May), there is the summer season where you crave and create conversations about teams, rankings, issues, players, rules, etc. Anything to get that fix.

But it’s somehow hollow because you care more.

That is also what makes Labor Day Weekend the Official College Basketball Foot in the Arse weekend. Students are back in school. College football is getting them into the sporting mindset. Coaches get to have some contact with their players and are thus juiced up and talkative. Preseason magazines, even if they are bad, are hitting the newsstands.

College hoops becomes fun because everybody starts caring. You can sense the start of the season, much like seeing the end of a marathon at Mile 20. (If you’ve ever run one, you can identify with the unplanned energy that comes when you see the mileage sign with the crooked 2 on it.)

This is the time when schedules come out and you start planning road trips. You circle the first team scrimmage and exhibition game. Pour over the conference slate and make predictions.